Tuesday, May 8, 2012

released 15 different series of postcards, updating the collection approximately every 2 years with the new additions to Cooperstown.

The Perez-Steele Hall of Fame Art Postcards were highly coveted by collectors, and although "limited" to a print run of 10,000 each, signed versions have a very robust secondary market. Due to the cheap nature of the postcards themselves (typically $0.50-$0.75), and how attractive they looked when signed, the postcards made great additions to any Hall of Fame or baseball collections. (More information about the history of Perez-Steele can be found on Perez's website.)

Unfortunately, the official agreement between the Hall of Fame and Perez-Steele ended in 2001, so when Rickey Henderson was inducted in 2009, he was too late to be included. But, although a postcard wasn't created, I just recently found out that Dick Perez has still been painting all of the Hall of Famers inducted for the past 10 years.

The artwork above is currently being auctioned off by

Robert Edward Auctions, along with a large collection of other original Dick Perez art. The Rickey is currently at $500 with about 4 days to go, but I expect it to go much higher once all is said and done.

My first exposure to Dick Perez was with the 1988 Donruss Diamond Kings set, the year after I started collecting. Although Perez produced the Diamond Kings set from 1982-1996, during the prime of Rickey's career, he only appeared in one set, in 1983. Amazingly, he had as many appearances as Glenn Hubbard and Mike Bielecki, and actually appeared less than Johnny Ray, who was in both the 1986 and 1989 releases. You can see images of all Dick Perez's Diamond Kings artwork here.